Editorial: Parents need to talk to college-bound kids about alcohol

It’s crunch time for students heading to college for the first time and their parents. New comforter? Check. Extra-long sheets? Check. Shower caddy? Check. First tuition payment? Check (a big one).

It’s crunch time for students heading to college for the first time and their parents. New comforter? Check. Extra-long sheets? Check. Shower caddy? Check. First tuition payment? Check (a big one).

But the most important task you will do together is talk about alcohol.

The Princeton Review’s annual guide to colleges, published Monday, surveyed 120,000 students. The guide has 62 categories, but the headline-grabber is always which institutions make the Top 20 party school list. This year, University of Florida had the dubious distinction of being the No. 1 party school.

If your son’s or daughter’s school is not on the list, don’t breathe a sigh of relief. It doesn’t mean anything.

You name the campus, the drinking culture is pervasive.

According to the National Advisory Council on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, nearly one-third — or 31 percent — of college students meet the criteria for alcohol abuse. Six percent are defined as suffering from alcohol dependence. One in four students said they had academic consequences from their drinking — lower grades, poor performance on exams or papers, missing class or falling behind.

These statistics are more believable because they come from the students’ own descriptions on questionnaires about their drinking.

Students typically set a pattern of behavior in the first six weeks in college. There will be many new experiences and challenges, and the pressure to drink will be intense. Your discussions could be key in how he or she handles the pressure. (Don’t expect, however, that they will welcome the discussion or tell you that it helped.)

Parents’ attitudes about college drinking can be as lackadaisical as those about drinking in high school — or more so. The temptation will be to say: It’s rite of passage. Or “I did it; I survived.”

But so many kids do not.

An Associated Press analysis of federal records released earlier this month found that 157 college-age people, 18 to 23, drank themselves to death from 1999 through 2005, the most recent year for which figures are available.

The number of alcohol-poisoning deaths went from 18 in 1999 to a peak of 35 in 2005. The total fluctuated from year to year and was as low as 14 in 2001. Still, the deaths nearly doubled in six years. That’s shocking.

One of the deaths last year was Jenna Foellmi, a 20-year-old biochemistry major at Winona State University, who died of alcohol poisoning on Dec. 14, a day after she finished her last exam of the semester.

Connie Gores, vice president for student life at Winona State, told AP: “There have always been problems with young people and alcohol, but it just seems like they are a little more intense now than they used to be. The goal of a lot of them is just to get smashed.”

In that light, the comments from a spokesman for the No. 1 party school, the University of Florida, seem dismissive indeed. “The fact that we have three national championships in two years is probably a major contributing factor,” Steve Orlando said. “We know our students like to have a good time.”

College is too expensive — and young lives are too precious — to call underage drinking and alcohol abuse a good time.

Chances are, your young adults will not spend their college years as teetotalers, but you owe it to them to speak openly and honestly about drinking — before they turn the key in their dorm room.

Rockford Register Star

Let them know

How to talk to your college-age student about drinking:

Be calm. Offer the facts, but avoid lecturing or setting dos and don’ts. College is the first opportunity for many young people to make their own decisions. Once they have the facts, stand back and trust their judgment.

Investigate counseling services on campus and advise your student how to access them.

Don’t hover, but don’t be a stranger. Call, e-mail and text your child regularly during the first six weeks of school and throughout the year.